The embarrassing root of Islam, Judaism and Christianity

Labarbapostiza · 19-09-2016 01:37AM #1

Okay.

Let's start with Exodus. When the Pharaoh's daughter finds Moses in his reed basket she gives him his name because she has drawn him from the water. Classical Hebrew script leaves out lots of vowels. The name in the text is מֹשֶׁה. This is MSH. There isn't an Egyptian word Moses, but there is an Egyptian word Masses, as in Ramesses. Which literally translates as the son of Ra. In Egypt under the Ra cult, all kings were known as Ramassees ...They were all Sons of Ra, or reincarnations of Ra. Literally sons of the god Ra. And they were all simultaneously both sons (reincarnations of Ra) and Ra. They were a hypostasis of both God and son of God.

Now to Jesus.

The spelling of Messiah in classical Hebrew is מֹשֶׁה. Which is the same as the spelling of מֹשֶׁה, Moses....because they are the same word.

Jesus, is both God and the son of God. The King etc. He dies and is resurrected. Also Joshua and Isiah, and Jesus all have the same spelling in Hebrew, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ. Because Jesus is a reincarnation of those biblical figures. False distinctions are created to avoid confusion. But in Hebrew it's all the same name.

So, Jesus is the Messiah....the Masseses....The Ramassees ..The Son of God. And also God.

And now the Muslims.

Muslims celebrate the festival of Ramadan.

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 02:41AM

And the "embarrassing" bit would be . . .?

shane9689 · 19-09-2016 02:47AM

Youre posting in an athiest forum. We agree. However your linking to egypt osnt 100% perfect. Jesus was a byproduct of jewish rebellion. A cult of personality that got out of hand.

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 02:56AM

Plus, on a nitpick, Moses (מֹשֶׁה) and messiah (מָשִׁיחַ) may be spelt the same in Hebrew when the vowels are omitted (as is standard), but that doesn't mean they're the same word. Rose, the past tense of "rise", and rose, the flower, are spelt the same but they are not the same word. They are what we call homographs, two different words which have the same written form. Since Hebrew is written without vowels, it has many, many homographs. If English were written without vowels, then raise, rise, ruse, rase, rays and rosy would all be homographs.

There are a number of theories about the etymology of "Moses". A plausible one is that it is from an Eyptian root meaning "child of", and that it's a contraction of, e.g., Rameses, which does indeed mean "child of Ra". However as the name of the deity has been dropped in the contraction, we have no reason to think it was Ra; it could have been any of a vast pantheon of Egyptian gods. Or it need not have been a god at all, but the child's actual father.

"Messiah" is not from an Egyptian root at all; it's from a Hebrew word meaning "to anoint".

brian00278 · 19-09-2016 03:48AM

The story of Moses is strikingly similar to that of the epic of Gilgamesh, great flood, two of every animal, great drought and plague on the land nearly identical, the only difference being the epic of Gilgamesh was written 2100BC.

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 04:00AM

I think you possibly mean that the story of Noah is similar to (parts of) the Epic of Gilgamesh?

Plus, for the honours students, neither the story of Moses nor the story of Noah involve a "great drought". Drought is about the only natural disaster that doesn't feature among the Ten Plagues in the Moses story. Noah's story, of course, is pretty much the opposite of a drought. There is a prolonged drought in the story of Joseph, though.

cowboyBuilder · 19-09-2016 09:23AM

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Okay.

Let's start with Exodus. When the Pharaoh's daughter finds Moses in his reed basket she gives him his name because she has drawn him from the water. Classical Hebrew script leaves out lots of vowels. The name in the text is מֹשֶׁה. This is MSH. There isn't an Egyptian word Moses, but there is an Egyptian word Masses, as in Ramesses. Which literally translates as the son of Ra. In Egypt under the Ra cult, all kings were known as Ramassees ...They were all Sons of Ra, or reincarnations of Ra. Literally sons of the god Ra. And they were all simultaneously both sons (reincarnations of Ra) and Ra. They were a hypostasis of both God and son of God.

Now to Jesus.

The spelling of Messiah in classical Hebrew is מֹשֶׁה. Which is the same as the spelling of מֹשֶׁה, Moses....because they are the same word.

Jesus, is both God and the son of God. The King etc. He dies and is resurrected. Also Joshua and Isiah, and Jesus all have the same spelling in Hebrew, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ. Because Jesus is a reincarnation of those biblical figures. False distinctions are created to avoid confusion. But in Hebrew it's all the same name.

So, Jesus is the Messiah....the Masseses....The Ramassees ..The Son of God. And also God.

And now the Muslims.

Muslims celebrate the festival of Ramadan.

That's quite interesting, but what about Ramadan ?

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 09:34AM

Ramadan shares some letters with Rameses therefore something something something oh look at that really surprising thing over there! therefore embarrassment for Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Or something like that.

cowboyBuilder · 19-09-2016 09:49AM

ah of course ... riight .. I was expecting some connection with Muhammad

oldrnwisr · 19-09-2016 09:58AM

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Okay.

Let's start with Exodus. When the Pharaoh's daughter finds Moses in his reed basket she gives him his name because she has drawn him from the water.

This is a frequently used mythological tradition. In later Egyptian tradition, following the birth of Horus, he too is floated down the Nile to protect him from the machinations of his uncle Set. In Sumerian legend Sargon of Akkad recalls the circumstances of his birth:

"My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not. The brothers of my father loved the hills. My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and ... years I exercised kingship."

Even in as far removed a tradition as India we see the story of Karna in the Mahabharata whose mother Kunti, afraid of having a child outside marriage puts Karna in a basket and floats him down the river where he is found by a charioteer of the king and subsequently raised by the couple as Vasusena.

Modern scholarly consensus is that Moses was a legendary figure with no actual historical basis. Therefore any connection between Moses and Ramsses is neither surprising nor meaningful in an overall discussion of biblical historicity.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Classical Hebrew script leaves out lots of vowels. The name in the text is מֹשֶׁה. This is MSH. There isn't an Egyptian word Moses, but there is an Egyptian word Masses, as in Ramesses. Which literally translates as the son of Ra. In Egypt under the Ra cult, all kings were known as Ramassees ...They were all Sons of Ra, or reincarnations of Ra. Literally sons of the god Ra. And they were all simultaneously both sons (reincarnations of Ra) and Ra. They were a hypostasis of both God and son of God.

Now to Jesus.

The spelling of Messiah in classical Hebrew is מֹשֶׁה. Which is the same as the spelling of מֹשֶׁה, Moses....because they are the same word.

Jesus, is both God and the son of God. The King etc. He dies and is resurrected. Also Joshua and Isiah, and Jesus all have the same spelling in Hebrew, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ. Because Jesus is a reincarnation of those biblical figures. False distinctions are created to avoid confusion. But in Hebrew it's all the same name.

So, Jesus is the Messiah....the Masseses....The Ramassees ..The Son of God. And also God.

Hebrew is a diacritical language and as such the diacritic marks attached to the letters significantly change the meaning of the word. Thus the word

מֹשֶׁ֔ה

or Moses is very different in context from mashiach or messiah:

מָשִׁ֫יחַ

despite being constructed from the same three letters, mem, shin and he. The segol under the shin in Moses and the kamatz under the mem of mashiach make this obvious. Furthermore, mashiach or messiah is derived from the Hebrew word mashach meaning anointed and has no connection to Moses or egypt.

There are plenty of solid arguments against the historicity of certain Old Testament and New Testament stories but this isn't one of them.

recedite · 19-09-2016 10:18AM

I wonder was it common thing to float unwanted newborns down a crocodile infested river, or was it an unusual practice? If it was a well known phenomenon, then all these stories could have arisen separately.
The stories would become popular because they would bolster the hope that the baby "might" be found and be looked after, and eventually grow up to become a Celeb. Which would help enormously to assuage any feelings of guilt at the time of the flotation.

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 10:23AM

I can't really speak for the worlds from which Gilgamesh, etc, came. But exposing unwanted infants to the elements, so allowing the gods to decide their fates, was a condoned and accepted practice in the Graeco-Roman world, and if it was also common in other societies this may account for why it is such a common trope in mythic stories. The Jews, and later the early Christians, considered the practice unconscionable and, in fact, the suppression of this practice in the Roman world is usually attributed to the growing influence of Christianity.

smacl · 19-09-2016 10:32AM

recedite wrote: »

I wonder was it common thing to float unwanted newborns down a crocodile infested river, or was it an unusual practice? If it was a well known phenomenon, then all these stories could have arisen separately.
The stories would become popular because they would bolster the hope that the baby "might" be found and be looked after, and eventually grow up to become a Celeb. Which would help enormously to assuage any feelings of guilt at the time of the flotation.

Was just about to post the same thing, with images of the many less fortunate also-rans floating around the estuary. OT, but a quick google suggests hauling babies out of the river has become something of a modern parable.

recedite · 19-09-2016 12:42PM

Peregrinus wrote: »

The Jews, and later the early Christians, considered the practice unconscionable..

But the Moses story is taken from Old Testament (Jewish) scriptures is it not? So the Jews must have been just as familiar as any other culture with it.
I'm guessing that as civilisation advanced, the practice gradually became socially unacceptable in all the various cultures, connected as they were by the Roman Empire "network".

shane9689 · 19-09-2016 01:47PM

Eitherway, its all bull****, so who cares?

ScumLord · 19-09-2016 01:57PM

I think there's a possibility the torah is an amalgamation of religious or spiritual practices around at the time that got turned into one single narrative at some point. Apparently the flood myth was taken from the sumerians, there's some cross over with other ancient religions and cultures, I've even heard of the numerology being linked to numerology at Göbekli Tepe.

While we're left with major religions now, in the past there were many, many competing religions. Each town would come with it's own god that would be competing with the neighbouring gods and the gods of their enemies, the romans basically collected gods from people they conquered, gods got merged under circumstances like this.. So it doesn't really surprise me there's some repetition. There seems to have been a sort of agreed on narrative for visiting gods.

johnnysmack · 19-09-2016 02:01PM

shane9689 wrote: »

Eitherway, its all bull****, so who cares?

Because it's interesting history. Dunno about you but I just learned about various meanings of ancient Hebrew words and that sending babies down rivers was a common practice.

shane9689 · 19-09-2016 03:11PM

its just trying to trace the origins of moses etc... is near impossible and anything written here is speculation. Its a 3000+ year old game of chinese whispers.

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 03:44PM

recedite wrote: »

But the Moses story is taken from Old Testament (Jewish) scriptures is it not? So the Jews must have been just as familiar as any other culture with it.
I'm guessing that as civilisation advanced, the practice gradually became socially unacceptable in all the various cultures, connected as they were by the Roman Empire "network".

Well, no. The cultures from which these stories emerged had disappeared before the Romans came along. Plus, many of them were in places which never fell under Roman rule anyway. The spread of Rome did nothing in itself to end the practice of child exposure, since the Romans themselves sanctioned it, both socially and legally. Christians opposed it, but this was very much a countercultural stance.

The Jews likely did emerge from a culture which had practiced child exposure; their rejection of the practice is one of the things which distinguished them from their neighbours and was part of their identity as Jews. By the time the scriptures are being compiled they are familiar with the practice, but as a practice carried on by Those People Over There, Not By Us. In fact, the "Moses as a foundling in a basket of rushes" detail is one of the features of the story which points to the story being, in large part, a borrowing from a neighbouring culture.

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 03:46PM

ScumLord wrote: »

I think there's a possibility the torah is an amalgamation of religious or spiritual practices around at the time that got turned into one single narrative at some point . . .

I think it's more than a possibility; it's a racing certainty.

magicbastarder · 19-09-2016 03:47PM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Ramadan shares some letters with Rameses therefore something something something oh look at that really surprising thing over there! therefore embarrassment for Christians, Jews and Muslims.

WHOAH BLACK BETTY

Peregrinus · 19-09-2016 03:53PM

Well, what can I say? The thread title promised embarrassment, but here we are 22 posts later and, so far, nothing to raise a blush to the cheek of even the chastest maiden. And Labarbapostiza, who hinted at so much, hasn't reappeared since post 1, the little tease.

Labarbapostiza · 19-09-2016 08:05PM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Plus, on a nitpick, Moses (מֹשֶׁה) and messiah (מָשִׁיחַ) may be spelt the same in Hebrew when the vowels are omitted (as is standard), but that doesn't mean they're the same word.

No. I've spent a bit of time looking into this. The script the Torah is written in, doesn't have the features in modern Hebrew script removing ambiguities. So, both Messiah and Moses are spelled MSH. There's also an interesting issue over whether the H, ה, should be pronounced or is meant as an honorific, and silent. This is important, because it may be the reason Gaelic scribes chose the letter h for accenting in script. Like the h in through...the h is in fact the dot of lentition, or the séimhiú. Why you find it in English is because the Gaelic scribes were the first to write English. I haven't gotten around to checking out the detail, whether choice of the h was specifically to do with the reading of Hebrew, with an actual Gaelic scholar of antique documents, but I've a good hunch.

There are a number of theories about the etymology of "Moses". A plausible one is that it is from an Eyptian root meaning "child of", and that it's a contraction of, e.g., Rameses, which does indeed mean "child of Ra". However as the name of the deity has been dropped in the contraction, we have no reason to think it was Ra; it could have been any of a vast pantheon of Egyptian gods. Or it need not have been a god at all, but the child's actual father.

I'd advise you to do something, that's quite painful, and actually read Exodus, King James. (It's not a nice experience whatsoever). The story is pretty emetic, and it's obviously scrambled. But, there's direct references to places like Goshen. Palestine is a very close neighbour of Egypt. The chance of cultural cross fertilisation not happening are zero to none.

So, why not the Ra in front of Moses name?.....This could be part of the injunction not to take the name of God in vain. Which actually means the name of God is not to be spoken. And there are various variations of this, many Jews write the name G-d, with a dash to remove the o, so it's not completely writing the name of God.

The other thing, which is exhausting to get into explaining, is how interpellation works in the bible as prophecy. In Gnostic Christianity, Judas is Jesus' twin brother, which sounds weird but it's likely to have been something removed from the mainstream, not created by the Gnostics. And it would have been there, likely as an interpellation to the story of Jacob and Esau. You get all these repetitions throughout the bible, and these are the prophecies. (they don't tell you this when they're indoctrinating you as a kid). Anyway, Joshua's invasion of the Levant and Syria, (at school you were told it was a land with no people, for a people with no land....in the bible it's a bloody and murderous invasion, driven by the ever loving God.) This may be a direct interpellation to Ramesses II invasion of Syria.

Why Jesus is occasionally called the Son of Man, in the bible is a biblical interpellation.

There has been an effort to cover the link for a long time. But, it's a bit like the way, the Greek and Latin version of Christianity is pushed by the Christian Church as being the pure and original form. But, the reality is it was a lot more varied. The bit where Jesus has a twin brother, that's something I'm not sure if it's been completely dropped from Syriac Christianity.

Labarbapostiza · 19-09-2016 08:36PM

shane9689 wrote: »

its just trying to trace the origins of moses etc... is near impossible and anything written here is speculation. Its a 3000+ year old game of chinese whispers.

Tracing the origins of the actual Moses is not really relevant. But, it's particular references to places or statements made can date the origin of a particular version of the story. The Chinese whispers themselves are interesting.

Islam is half Chinese whispers...and half a book, the Koran, that may turn out to be something written by one of the more colourful fragments of early Christianity.

There are not that many people working on the ancient documents. And I've heard from someone who does dabble in this research, that there are tons of old early Christian Aramaic documents, no one has gotten around to looking at yet. There's only a handful of people in the world who can read Aramaic.

Samaris · 20-09-2016 12:27PM

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

I'd advise you to do something, that's quite painful, and actually read Exodus, King James. (It's not a nice experience whatsoever). The story is pretty emetic, and it's obviously scrambled. But, there's direct references to places like Goshen. Palestine is a very close neighbour of Egypt. The chance of cultural cross fertilisation not happening are zero to none.

Actually, on that note, I should really give it a read again. The Old Testament had some cracking good stories in it. It's probably best (if you're agnostic or atheist) to read them as the legends and mythology of the Jewish people, much as you'd read the ancient Norse or Egyptian tales.

It's been quite some time since I read anything about this, so don't take this as gospal (sorry), but I recall (doing a bit of refreshing on this while I'm writing, but mistakes may creep in) that the ancient roots of Judiaism are from ancient Canaan, and the God (Yahweh) of Israel was taken from the head of the pantheon at the time, El, from which the name Israel itself comes. El himself was part of a Divine Duality with Asherah, the mother of gods, including Baal. Asherah was also linked as the divine consort of ...the head of another major ancient religion at the time, and of Yahweh for a time. It's interesting, even fascinating to me, to see that as the worship of Yahweh became more aggressively monotheistic, that Asherah (who may have been melded into other goddesses over time, such as Inanna and Ishtar, either retroactively or proactively) and Baal were both demonised quite literally, with Solomon's statues of her in his Temples being demolished and Baal becoming more well-known eventually as the demon and a lord of hell.

As a note, Asherah, once called Queen of Heaven, has been basically replaced in modern Christianity by Mary, although it is carefully defined that she is not a god (which would conflate dangerously with the monotheistic ideal of the ultimate power of God), but rather a mortal raised to semi-divinity, something of a reward for her great faith.

This is all pretty by the by, I just find it interesting!

Labarbapostiza · 20-09-2016 05:13PM

Samaris wrote: »

Actually, on that note, I should really give it a read again. The Old Testament had some cracking good stories in it. It's probably best (if you're agnostic or atheist) to read them as the legends and mythology of the Jewish people, much as you'd read the ancient Norse or Egyptian tales.

There are lots of reasons to look at these texts. The myths have influence in the present. And not only that, new myths are being created in the present for purposes in the present, and since very few people ever bother to read the original texts (and you can count virtually the entire clergy of the world in this), they can get away with it.

Like the Zionist line, that there's no mention of Palestine in the bible. Now, many of whom may believe there is no mention of Palestine in the Torah, they've never read it, and those who do know it's there expect no one is going to check. The version that children are given in schools, isn't simply meant as a more palatable version suitable for children, it's meant as indoctrination for adults. In the children's' version, Israel is a magically empty land. A land with no people for a people with no land. As a child, I had copy books that had maps of Israel on the backs of them, maps that didn't show the existence of the Palestinian territories. And they were maps of the modern state of Israel, not biblical era.

Whatever the intention of whoever was behind this (who being the Catholic hierarchy, I'm not making any insinuation otherwise), they were definitely trying to implant a political message, under the cloak of religion. And, the same kind of political indoctrination is going on with the education of Jewish and Muslim children, as much as Christians. And it can be harmless; Lots of Muslims I've spoken to, have told me they're really confused by the extremist ideology, because when they were at school the emphasis was absolutely different.

The glorification of martyrdom is a new thing. The first suicide the mission in the middle east, was carried out by Japanese Marxists in support of the Palestinians. The Palestinians then began to copy it, and the idea spread. It's was a combination of the Christian tradition of martyrdom, with that of the Japanese kamikaze. Can precedents be found in any of the Islamic texts, yeah, but, you could probably find the basis for justifying suicide attacks by squinting your way through the collected works of doctor Seuss. In the Koran there is no injunction to kill either Christians or Jews and neither are they considered infidels or Kafir......But a political situation arises where someone wants either Christians or Jews killed, and what do you know, a Hadith, a saying of the Prophet can be found, to justify it. Even though, from even early Islam, the Hadiths have always come with a caveat that some, if not all, are fake....But you don't even need a genuine fake hadith to begin with, who the F is going to check if you just make them up as you go along. Which is what they actually do.

There's even a distortion of what the word Kafir means. Kids, who then become adults, are told it means non-Muslim, or unbeliever, when it doesn't mean either. Which can then be used as a motivation for violence. Kafir is the same word as the English word cover. It means a person who covers the truth, specifically of Islam, for some wicked end. And the distortion of the meaning of the word, Kafir, would be an example.

One of the gags in the film Four Lions, is one of the guys packing an Islam for children book for his trip to Afghanistan. That's based on reality, it has been found over and over again, guys travelling to Syria to fight for ISIS have done things like buying the Dummies guide to Islam from Amazon before their trip.

Peregrinus · 21-09-2016 03:31AM

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

No. I've spent a bit of time looking into this. The script the Torah is written in, doesn't have the features in modern Hebrew script removing ambiguities. So, both Messiah and Moses are spelled MSH.

You’re missing the point. I’m not denying that in biblical Hebrew Messiah and Moses are spelt the same way. What I’m saying is that this doesn’t make them the same word. There are many example in English of two words which are spelt the same way; we do not imagine that this makes them the same word. Why would we see the matter differently with Hebrew?

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

There's also an interesting issue over whether the H, ה, should be pronounced or is meant as an honorific, and silent. This is important, because it may be the reason Gaelic scribes chose the letter h for accenting in script. Like the h in through...the h is in fact the dot of lentition, or the séimhiú. Why you find it in English is because the Gaelic scribes were the first to write English. I haven't gotten around to checking out the detail, whether choice of the h was specifically to do with the reading of Hebrew, with an actual Gaelic scholar of antique documents, but I've a good hunch.

To be honest, I don’t know when the ‘h’ started to be used to indicate lenition in Irish orthography. My impression is that it’s a modern convention, but I could be wrong. But, either way, I’d be astonished if Hebrew had any influence in the matter. The Irish acquired literacy with Christianisation, in the fifth century, but Western Christians at the time read the scriptures in Greek and Latin, not in Hebrew. I seriously doubt there were many Irish scholars with any knowledge of Hebrew prior to the Renaissance, nearly a thousand years after Irish first developed a written form. It’s very unlikely that Hebrew had any influence at all on Irish orthography.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

I'd advise you to do something, that's quite painful, and actually read Exodus, King James . . .

I have read it, but not in King James. (Why do you suggest King James? It’s an appalling translation.)

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

. . . there's direct references to places like Goshen. Palestine is a very close neighbour of Egypt. The chance of cultural cross fertilisation not happening are zero to none.

So, why not the Ra in front of Moses name?.....This could be part of the injunction not to take the name of God in vain. Which actually means the name of God is not to be spoken. And there are various variations of this, many Jews write the name G-d, with a dash to remove the o, so it's not completely writing the name of God.

Again, you’re missing the point. There absolutely is cross-cultural fertilisation going on; I have said so explicitly. But “why not Ra in front of Moses name?” Because we have no reason to think of Ra before any other of the many hundreds of gods in the Egyptian pantheon, that’s why. Nothing in the text suggests Ra. You’re just assuming Ra, for no stated reason.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

The other thing, which is exhausting to get into explaining, is how interpellation works in the bible as prophecy. In Gnostic Christianity, Judas is Jesus' twin brother, which sounds weird but it's likely to have been something removed from the mainstream, not created by the Gnostics. And it would have been there, likely as an interpellation to the story of Jacob and Esau.

No, this doesn’t really make sense. You suggest that the Gnostic traditions about, e.g. Jesus’ family structure are more reliable than the more orthodox traditions. I don’t think you’ll find many scholars agreeing with youi; the Gnostic traditions are pretty diverse, and are mostly much later in time than the gospels and the letters of Paul, and they are explicitly mystical and dependent on “secret knowledge”. They are interesting and may be important, but they are of very doubtful historicity. And I don’t think you can simultaneously suggest that the twin Judas claim is (a) an interpellation of the Jacob/Esau relationship, and (b) “more reliable” than the conventional view. It could be one or the other, but not both.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

You get all these repetitions throughout the bible, and these are the prophecies. (they don't tell you this when they're indoctrinating you as a kid).

Because it would be false. The bible includes a number of prophetic texts, but the story of Jacob and Esau does not come from any of them.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Anyway, Joshua's invasion of the Levant and Syria, (at school you were told it was a land with no people, for a people with no land....in the bible it's a bloody and murderous invasion, driven by the ever loving God.) This may be a direct interpellation to Ramesses II invasion of Syria.

Well, it may be, but I don’t think we have any particular reason to think that it is. It could just as easily be an interpellation of any number of other invasions, or a composite story drawing on several invasions, or it may be entirely legendary.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Why Jesus is occasionally called the Son of Man, in the bible is a biblical interpellation.

It’s a re-use of a phrase that is used many times in the Book of Ezekiel (by Ezekiel, of himself), and one that would have been familiar to the authors of the gospels, to the readership, and indeed also to the characters mentioned in the gospels. If you want to call that an “interpellation”, feel free. It could be a phrase put in Jesus’ mouth by the evangelists, who want to point to parallels between Jesus and Ezekiel. Or – the parsimonious explanation - the evangelists could simply be accurately recording that Jesus used the phrase himself, with the same intention.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

There has been an effort to cover the link for a long time. But, it's a bit like the way, the Greek and Latin version of Christianity is pushed by the Christian Church as being the pure and original form. But, the reality is it was a lot more varied. The bit where Jesus has a twin brother, that's something I'm not sure if it's been completely dropped from Syriac Christianity.

Mark and Matthew both record that Jesus had a brother called Judas, which looks like pretty much the opposite of attempting to conceal anything. They do not identify him as a twin, and they do not identify him with Judas Iscariot. The third-century Gnostic text, the Acts of Thomas suggests he is a twin of Jesus, and identifies him with the apostle Thomas (known to us as “doubting Thomas”), not with Judas Iscariot. But it’s very ambiguous on both points and, in any case, is much too late in composition to be very persuasive.

Speedwell · 21-09-2016 04:27AM

I'm an atheist Jew, but even so, I would greatly appreciate Gentiles not constructing conspiracy theories around things they don't bloody understand in the first place. Thanks very much.

Peregrinus · 21-09-2016 06:38AM

Speedwell wrote: »

I'm an atheist Jew, but even so, I would greatly appreciate Gentiles not constructing conspiracy theories around things they don't bloody understand in the first place. Thanks very much.

A brave effort, Speedwell. But as Christians have been putting their own interpretations on the Hebrew scriptures for about two thousand years now, I think that particular ship has sailed!

Speedwell · 21-09-2016 06:51AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

A brave effort, Speedwell. But as Christians have been putting their own interpretations on the Hebrew scriptures for about two thousand years now, I think that particular ship has sailed!

Haha, sorry, I was cranky before my morning tea

But you're right, you're right, if the goyim didn't talk about things like that, we'd feel slighted and start the conversation ourselves, more than likely.

Peregrinus · 21-09-2016 07:04AM

Oh, I think you're quite entitled to object to goyisch interpretations and constructions of the Hebrew scriptures, and to claim a degree of authority and authenticity for Jewish perspectives. But the goal of getting goyim to butt out entirely is not a realistic one.

It comes with the territory of being a light unto the Nations, I guess.

The embarrassing root of Islam, Judaism and Christianity

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